


Pyre

by rukafais



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, and death in general, and injury in one part, dying is weird when you're a god, warning for mentions of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 12:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18777961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: They carry the memory of that ancient demise within them, the burden of a heart that will kill them in the end. In exchange, he burns to ash along with them, and carries the memories of their lives within him.It’s only fair, he thinks.





	Pyre

**Author's Note:**

> Ughh I have too much to do and it's getting in the way of writing smh

The first of his vessels is bright and curious, so unlike him, unlike the god still exhausted and wounded from a long battle and a painful death. Through a child’s eyes he sees the world anew; everything is new and wondrous, a complete novelty. They bring him trinkets and gifts and the little things only children find value in, and he finds value in them too, from a mortal’s perspective.

They keep that soft sense of wonder, as they grow older, as they grow old. As they travel to dying lands and bring bugs under the sheltering wing of the very first Troupe, as they taste bitter sadness and sweet victory, and every emotion in between.

(He had always been born for a singular purpose. To wander the nightmares of bugs and consume them, to wander to dying lands and scour away the ashes of the past. Even when they had fought, and he had been cast away, that duty had not changed. He remembers what he must do, even if she does not.

Such freedoms were not allowed to him.

His vessel is not free either. His nature does not allow him to lie to himself, to make things sweeter, to shield himself from a harsh truth. His sister was always far better at such things - another reason why they came to blows.

But he extends the chain as far as he can. With his own hands he pulls it away from them until they must take up the mantle, their duty as the vessel of a god.

It is all he can do.

He does not think or reason as a mortal does, but he knows _debt,_ he knows _fairness._

He knows that he owes them at least that much.)

The Ritual is performed; for a brief time, vessel and god are one. The blade pierces their chest and his; they bleed until there is nothing left.

Their heart drums wildly at first, and then slows dramatically. (Always dramatically, even now.) He breathes through their shattered lungs and broken heart, and sings to them in a voice and language he hasn’t used since they were very, very small.

The lullaby is ancient; it comes from older, happier memories. He sings his vessel to sleep, and the flame within them burns out, and so does he, for a time.

He burns to ash and falls into slumber. In the red-tinged darkness, in the newly-kindled flame of the Nightmare Heart, he hears their voice, echoing that same lullaby.

They are the first life, the first death.

They will not be the last.

* * *

He watches his vessels grow from child to deadly adult; he is a constant presence in their minds, their lives, an inseparable part of them. Their emotions and his run together, vivid and lurid as blood; their experiences, their pain, their joy - all of it, he shares, but does not take away.

To some, he proves little more than an interesting diversion or puzzle; to others, an ‘imaginary’ friend, a mentor, an impassive shoulder to cry on (and some vessels have many tears to shed). He is content, whatever role he plays. It’s not for him to decide; they are different every time, and he savours that difference.

Many of his vessels have some talent in the creative arts. He watches them scribble across tent walls and put brush to canvas, quill to paper, chisel to stone; they draw themselves, and others, and him. He burns it into his memory every time, because though he can touch those things through his vessels - they belong to that incarnation alone, in the end.

In his near-endless sleep, memories are sparks of fire summoned at a thought, made solid and real. He fills the Heart with such irreplaceable things, the clutter of paper and clay and canvas. The stories of every vessel’s life, the portraits of themselves and what they found fit to preserve. Every perfect piece and every failure, because from such failures and imperfections are nightmares born.

He runs his claws over half-melted metals, shattered ceramic, scraps of paper; the frustration of his vessels - of him - writ large. They surge and seethe with wild emotions, a maze of raw and unrefined memory; he remembers, in the perfect clarity of a god, the way they felt.

They create. They feel. They love, in their different ways, so much. Each one a flame of their own making, burning bright and unique. He feels pride, of a sort.

He watches them - watches through them - as they travel to dying lands, to fulfill their responsibilities as a god’s vessel. As they grow attached and connected; as they take in those who have little else left, and find love blooming there in whatever way suits them. Families and friends and lovers.

Storytellers, musicians, warriors, wanderers. They have been, he has been, all of those lives and more since. They craft themselves, they make themselves anew, and he does not guide their hands. Every flaw and every brightness in them is theirs alone; he cannot, will not, interfere.

He is not as his vessels are. He cannot change what he is, no more than a fire can refuse to burn or rain refuse to fall. He is an endless torrent of flame, consuming the nightmares of others and taking them away, reminding them to wake; his path was set from the moment he was born. It will only stop when the world itself crumbles, and there is no more need for nightmares.

The Nightmare King desires little but to fulfill his purpose, and asks for no more than that.

But if he can be said to want anything, he wishes for the happiness of each vessel - each child, each incarnation, each soul - that bears the terrible burden of his heart. If he can be said to hope for anything, he hopes, in his own way, that they will find their own path and their own fulfillment, beyond the Heart’s duty.

When the time comes, he dies with them, he holds them close, so they do not burn to ashes alone in the dark as he did so long ago. He sings that selfsame lullaby that he did for the very first, so many lifetimes past.

For each and every death, he feels that sharp and stabbing pain anew, the pain of a wounded heart.

If there is anything he has learned, if there is any way he has changed in all these long lifetimes, he has learned what it means to grieve.


End file.
